Saturday, December 29, 2007
Season of discounts and discontent
The time is back with us when people scratch their heads and wonder why the not very great and not very good are on the Queen’s Honours list Given my republican tendencies (well, leanings that have tipped me over into a horizontal defiance) it always surprises me when people conflate the need for royalty with these devalued awards. Their semi-mystical logic is that royalty transcends mundane, common life. That a head of state should have an ineffable quality to which an ordinary Joe or Josie could never aspire. And to receive an honour from such, imbues the recipient with self-esteem laced with awe.
My view is that an elected President would confer on behalf of all of us, the State’s gratification for an individual’s contribution to its security, culture or economy in a way which might be transparent and based on agreed criteria; because a President would be truly one of us, the people, not a curious offspring of a line of blood that has resulted from historical accident and murky acts. We could then rid ourselves of cash for honours, bowing and scraping, awards that are based on class, privilege or brownness (see earlier blog!) in the civil service. We might also begin a process of restructuring our society so that the establishment no longer grasps the social tiller with its self-aggrandising hand.
Last night I watched The History Boys on the tele and marvelled again at dear Alan Bennett’s flair for words and drama. In this consummate piece of writing he says more about the parlous state of the education of the young than a thousand academic reports. Today, time-serving technocrats rule the curriculum, teacher training, resourcing, measurement and the so-called development of the next generation. As a result we have fewer university entrants from those in relative poverty, schools as factories and a social experiment that has eroded our cultural creativity. Education policy resonates in its mechanistic aspirations with the dimming of the light of free speech, new draconian laws, ID cards and talking CCTV cameras. In The History Boys, Hector, a camp but harmless gay school teacher, professes to have no other purpose in professional life than explore the history of ideas. How his students use the experience and to what ends, is their business and responsibility, not his or the State’s. He is pitted against a moderniser, a smart teacher, a man who knows how to train students to appeal to exam boards and interview panels. Culture is seen by the latter to be a basis for expedience, a means to gain status and privilege, a book of useful facts to brighten one’s dinner party charisma, a dumbing down of what we might offer our society. Smart but never profound.
The anarchy of people, their cultural aspirations, their refusal to be dragooned for economic and political ends should be central to education. We might then see a critical revolt against the specious nature of monarchy, class and vested interests and a line of Governments whose limited intelligence and vision constrains and stultifies the vital energies of our society.
Labels: Anarchy in the UK....
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Faggots and Maggots
Long in the tooth as I am – the first record I owned was a 78, Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley, the other side being Thirteen Women and Only One Man in Town – the various incidents of BBC intervention on the part of a minority (or majority) have always stood out as pathetic beacons of shirt-in-underpants conservatism under the great pleasure dome of rock. These interventions have usually meant the banning of tracks from the main airwaves whether they be by Jane Birkin, the Sex Pistols or Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The latest decision (since rescinded as the maggots in Auntie’s carcass have been squirted with the bug killer of liberal sentiment) was to smudge out the word faggot from Fairy Tale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. This was on the grounds that it might offend the feelings of gay men and was made on their behalf. The song is twenty years old and is said to be as much a part of Christmas as mince pies and the Queen’s Speech. Well, I know which of three I would retain, if forced and it wouldn’t be the annual nonsense from the House of Windsor or the appeal to my gluttony. Songs have long been a way of causing the wounds to open as the cultural knives of the New meet the desiccated flesh of the Old. This has always happened in social, religious and political terrains.
Real rock music keeps alive the rebellious youth in the ageing and sustains the vitality of the young as they seek to supplant what they find to be vacuous and deathly. Rock music is part of the great tide of art’s radicalism. Even an inoffensive, anti-religious ditty such as Fairy Tale of New York may contain lines that might damage your bourgeois sensibility but it is in its overall message of bawdiness rather than in the word faggot that this power resides.
Long in the tooth as I am – the first record I owned was a 78, Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley, the other side being Thirteen Women and Only One Man in Town – the various incidents of BBC intervention on the part of a minority (or majority) have always stood out as pathetic beacons of shirt-in-underpants conservatism under the great pleasure dome of rock. These interventions have usually meant the banning of tracks from the main airwaves whether they be by Jane Birkin, the Sex Pistols or Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The latest decision (since rescinded as the maggots in Auntie’s carcass have been squirted with the bug killer of liberal sentiment) was to smudge out the word faggot from Fairy Tale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. This was on the grounds that it might offend the feelings of gay men and was made on their behalf. The song is twenty years old and is said to be as much a part of Christmas as mince pies and the Queen’s Speech. Well, I know which of three I would retain, if forced and it wouldn’t be the annual nonsense from the House of Windsor or the appeal to my gluttony. Songs have long been a way of causing the wounds to open as the cultural knives of the New meet the desiccated flesh of the Old. This has always happened in social, religious and political terrains.
Real rock music keeps alive the rebellious youth in the ageing and sustains the vitality of the young as they seek to supplant what they find to be vacuous and deathly. Rock music is part of the great tide of art’s radicalism. Even an inoffensive, anti-religious ditty such as Fairy Tale of New York may contain lines that might damage your bourgeois sensibility but it is in its overall message of bawdiness rather than in the word faggot that this power resides.
Labels: Queer thinking by the BBC...
Monday, December 17, 2007
The browning of Britain
I read somewhere recently – I remember, it was in one of those answers-to-impossible-questions books that are piled up near the door in Waterstones; the sort that people buy for friends when they have run out of ideas – that the basic colour of the universe is brown. Examine all the colour spectra of everything that exists in space and time and brown dominates. Just like when you were a child and you painted something really pretty but couldn’t leave it alone and you kept adding and adding more colour until what you had left was a soggy brown rectangle of sugar paper. Not only that, but your paintbox had also been transformed into a uniform khaki. So when God or Nature made the universe’s infinite vastness, He/It, too, must have ended up over-egging the colour aspect.
Sludge brown is probably the pigment of bureaucracy rather than its usual association with grey. The reason is this. The more bureaucracy is vested with responsibility for aspects of social life, the more layers of it become implicated. And layers mean lots of individuals at different levels of the hierarchy. And the more they confer via their emails, memos, conferences and break-out sessions, the more the clarity of an original, possibly appropriate decision becomes an opaque, unworkable sludge. Brown, in fact.
In some ways it is even worse than this. Brown may be the least liked colour in all the tins on the shelf. I am sure research would prove my hypothesis to be true. Colourful people are creative, active, go-getting, interesting, risky and sometimes difficult to take. Put the ones who are, let us say, brownish or, at least suffering a dearth of vibrant colour, into any organisation and they accelerate the dunning of its bureaucracy. The non-doers, the risk-less, the organisationally dependent for their very identity, once they become social administrators, in their varying shades of drab, develop the curricula for schools, the by-laws for the council, health and safety regulations, laws to close loopholes in laws, multicultural niceties, obscenity criteria, prevention of humour that might cause offence….. and on and on. Put in another, even more graphic way, they are like a multi-hued, if muted, kaleidoscope of food on a dinner plate when they begin their careers. What is the uniform colour that they share when their organisations eliminate them from their bowels into the outer world?
The reason so much of British society is dull and lacking, is that the brown have inherited the earth.
Kerouac was right. Bureaucrats steal our time and our choices through legislation. They mess up our paintbox.
I read somewhere recently – I remember, it was in one of those answers-to-impossible-questions books that are piled up near the door in Waterstones; the sort that people buy for friends when they have run out of ideas – that the basic colour of the universe is brown. Examine all the colour spectra of everything that exists in space and time and brown dominates. Just like when you were a child and you painted something really pretty but couldn’t leave it alone and you kept adding and adding more colour until what you had left was a soggy brown rectangle of sugar paper. Not only that, but your paintbox had also been transformed into a uniform khaki. So when God or Nature made the universe’s infinite vastness, He/It, too, must have ended up over-egging the colour aspect.
Sludge brown is probably the pigment of bureaucracy rather than its usual association with grey. The reason is this. The more bureaucracy is vested with responsibility for aspects of social life, the more layers of it become implicated. And layers mean lots of individuals at different levels of the hierarchy. And the more they confer via their emails, memos, conferences and break-out sessions, the more the clarity of an original, possibly appropriate decision becomes an opaque, unworkable sludge. Brown, in fact.
In some ways it is even worse than this. Brown may be the least liked colour in all the tins on the shelf. I am sure research would prove my hypothesis to be true. Colourful people are creative, active, go-getting, interesting, risky and sometimes difficult to take. Put the ones who are, let us say, brownish or, at least suffering a dearth of vibrant colour, into any organisation and they accelerate the dunning of its bureaucracy. The non-doers, the risk-less, the organisationally dependent for their very identity, once they become social administrators, in their varying shades of drab, develop the curricula for schools, the by-laws for the council, health and safety regulations, laws to close loopholes in laws, multicultural niceties, obscenity criteria, prevention of humour that might cause offence….. and on and on. Put in another, even more graphic way, they are like a multi-hued, if muted, kaleidoscope of food on a dinner plate when they begin their careers. What is the uniform colour that they share when their organisations eliminate them from their bowels into the outer world?
The reason so much of British society is dull and lacking, is that the brown have inherited the earth.
Kerouac was right. Bureaucrats steal our time and our choices through legislation. They mess up our paintbox.
Labels: Bloody bureaucracy...
Saturday, December 15, 2007
The Assassination of Jesse James by Jack Sanger
Let me explain the background to this odd title. I saw a documentary on Jesse James recently and then went to see the film with Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, (excellent!). Both were reasonably well researched and showed Jesse James to have been a psychotic killer. Rather like Billy the Kid, he became the subject of contemporary US equivalents of penny dreadfuls - cheap paperbacks that eulogised him as a hero. The song, 'Jesse James' has helped to consolidate this myth and it is sung by country folk singers all over the western world.
What, of course, the song does, is prop up the case for Americans' inalienable right, within their constitution, to bear arms. Making heroes of killers is one of the earlier examples of 'spin' that was, and is still, so powerful, it is continual free publicity for the American gun lobby. I don't think I'm being PC in rewriting it, merely historically correct.
Jesse James
Jesse James was a lad, he killed many a man
He robbed the Glendale train
He stole, fought and lied with his brother by his side
He’d kill without shame, he was insane
Chorus
Oh Jesse had a wife to mourn all her life
Two children they were brave
But that weak neurotic coward who shot Mr Howard
Has laid evil Jesse in his grave
It was on a Saturday night, the moon was shining bright
They robbed the Glendale train
With the agent on his knees, he delivered up the keys
To those outlaws Frank and Jesse James
The people held their breath, when they heard of Jesse’s death
They wondered how he ever came to fall
Robert Ford, it was a fact, shot Jesse in the back
While Jesse hung a picture on the wall
Oh Jesse was insane, something in his brain
Though he never killed a mother or a child
He stole, fought and lied, with his brother by his side
And at the hand of Robert Ford, he died
Well, this song has been remade to show the world today
That Jesse was a killer in the west
He lived by the gun and was shot by fellow scum
As a hero he could never pass the test
Let me explain the background to this odd title. I saw a documentary on Jesse James recently and then went to see the film with Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, (excellent!). Both were reasonably well researched and showed Jesse James to have been a psychotic killer. Rather like Billy the Kid, he became the subject of contemporary US equivalents of penny dreadfuls - cheap paperbacks that eulogised him as a hero. The song, 'Jesse James' has helped to consolidate this myth and it is sung by country folk singers all over the western world.
What, of course, the song does, is prop up the case for Americans' inalienable right, within their constitution, to bear arms. Making heroes of killers is one of the earlier examples of 'spin' that was, and is still, so powerful, it is continual free publicity for the American gun lobby. I don't think I'm being PC in rewriting it, merely historically correct.
Jesse James
Jesse James was a lad, he killed many a man
He robbed the Glendale train
He stole, fought and lied with his brother by his side
He’d kill without shame, he was insane
Chorus
Oh Jesse had a wife to mourn all her life
Two children they were brave
But that weak neurotic coward who shot Mr Howard
Has laid evil Jesse in his grave
It was on a Saturday night, the moon was shining bright
They robbed the Glendale train
With the agent on his knees, he delivered up the keys
To those outlaws Frank and Jesse James
The people held their breath, when they heard of Jesse’s death
They wondered how he ever came to fall
Robert Ford, it was a fact, shot Jesse in the back
While Jesse hung a picture on the wall
Oh Jesse was insane, something in his brain
Though he never killed a mother or a child
He stole, fought and lied, with his brother by his side
And at the hand of Robert Ford, he died
Well, this song has been remade to show the world today
That Jesse was a killer in the west
He lived by the gun and was shot by fellow scum
As a hero he could never pass the test
Labels: Glendale to Columbine...
Friday, December 14, 2007
What a load of Bali nonsense
Whatever weak resolution comes out of the talks about the global environment, the fact remains that the US has become the caricature of a self-aggrandising bully. Whilst its history of ‘exporting democracy’ at the end of a gun over the last decades, whether in South America, the far east or the middle east has had all the hallmarks of a schizophrenic’s inability to understand and reflect upon his or her violent attrition, the ‘buck’ doesn’t stop there. It is forever trying to bolster its economy to the detriment of others, whether equally developed nations or those that are trying, grimly, to raise themselves from poverty. Thus any attempt to curtail its massive depletion of carbon fuels and the ingredients that keep our atmosphere stable, is met with hostility from its deep core of industrial and domestic gluttony.
Even though there is a large percentage of Americans who disagree with national policies, they hardly scratch the chromium plated gloss of Washington’s rhetoric. We will wait forever for the Americans to drive a global effort in the equitable sharing of resources because the US psyche is driven by a basic belief in capitalism, not the wholehearted support of the extremes of neo-con, necessarily, but at every level there is competition to grasp what’s available. This happens at individual, communal, state and national levels. It results in no healthcare for poorer people, homelessness as a result of the greed of the sub-prime market, the bearing of arms that leads to children and students’ deaths and the conspicuous guzzling of resources by those who can afford them.
Societies cannot maintain civilised, democratic and socially responsible behaviour without a barter between entrepreneurism and socialism. Global democracy means going without to a certain degree, in order that those who have little or nothing can gain enough to make life tolerable. Bali is a battleground between battle-hungry exploiters and would-be cohabitees of global conservation. The US, as a nation, hardly comes anywhere near the line between the two.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Dealing with your naked truth
If television is not pandering to the fantasies of people wanting a place in the sun or, at least, a new location, it is offering a new skin for them to live in. This is cheap-shot reality viewing and, in some ways, it is TV’s own version of Second Life, the Internet-based virtual community discussed in an earlier blog. Woody Allen once said, “Life is hard and then you die” and there seems to be a prevailing notion that if you can acquire a swisher house or a more attractive identity, then this, at least, will result in a more interesting journey to the dark abyss.
To meet your Reaper in better shape, according to current lore, you could do a lot worse than metamorphose under the all-seeing eye of a body expert. In brief, if you can’t change the world around you, then change yourself and become a different, more desirable personality in that world. However, this is apparently too difficult to do on your own, even with NLP.
To effect the cure, it appears you must subjugate your essential self to the strict regimes of pseudo-posh women whose beauty-orientations are on a dizzier and more spiritually pure plane than your own. Alternatively, offer yourself passively to strange otherworldly humanoids who, because they prize their own rarefied sexuality above all else, cannot be accused of physical impropriety and are thus able to touch your private parts in the interests of broadening your hosizons and creating a better you. Whichever you choose, dominatrix or camp commandant, these experts will denigrate, ruthlessly, your current body and personality by revealing, under the exacting lens of the camera, all that makes you an abject social dud. Now, suitably deconstructed to an apathetic heap of total irrelevance to humanity, you are perfect for reconstitution into the kind of person who advertises in Soul Mates: “Vibrant tactile female, confident, great shape, wicked sense of humour, looking for partner to take me where none has been before. No hang-ups.”
And off you go. You are no longer you but carry an implant, a retained set of ego-cells from the expert who has rebuilt you in his or her likeness. The road to hell is full of such good retentions.
If television is not pandering to the fantasies of people wanting a place in the sun or, at least, a new location, it is offering a new skin for them to live in. This is cheap-shot reality viewing and, in some ways, it is TV’s own version of Second Life, the Internet-based virtual community discussed in an earlier blog. Woody Allen once said, “Life is hard and then you die” and there seems to be a prevailing notion that if you can acquire a swisher house or a more attractive identity, then this, at least, will result in a more interesting journey to the dark abyss.
To meet your Reaper in better shape, according to current lore, you could do a lot worse than metamorphose under the all-seeing eye of a body expert. In brief, if you can’t change the world around you, then change yourself and become a different, more desirable personality in that world. However, this is apparently too difficult to do on your own, even with NLP.
To effect the cure, it appears you must subjugate your essential self to the strict regimes of pseudo-posh women whose beauty-orientations are on a dizzier and more spiritually pure plane than your own. Alternatively, offer yourself passively to strange otherworldly humanoids who, because they prize their own rarefied sexuality above all else, cannot be accused of physical impropriety and are thus able to touch your private parts in the interests of broadening your hosizons and creating a better you. Whichever you choose, dominatrix or camp commandant, these experts will denigrate, ruthlessly, your current body and personality by revealing, under the exacting lens of the camera, all that makes you an abject social dud. Now, suitably deconstructed to an apathetic heap of total irrelevance to humanity, you are perfect for reconstitution into the kind of person who advertises in Soul Mates: “Vibrant tactile female, confident, great shape, wicked sense of humour, looking for partner to take me where none has been before. No hang-ups.”
And off you go. You are no longer you but carry an implant, a retained set of ego-cells from the expert who has rebuilt you in his or her likeness. The road to hell is full of such good retentions.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
The case of the Sudanese teddy bear
Alexander Pope satirised the enmity between families caused by a suitor’s removal of a lock of a woman’s hair without permission, in Rape of the Lock, by comparing it to the rape of Helen of Troy and untold misbehaviour of the Gods. The ‘storm in a teacup’ that underpins such satire comes to mind over the teddy bear in the Sudan imbroglio. It would be hard to imagine a less offensive act to Islam than the naming of the said toy, Mohammed. From what I have read there is nothing in the verses of the Qur’an which prohibits such naming. It is inconceivable that Mohammed, himself, demanded that his name should not be taken in vain, such was his apparent humility! Just as with the Christian bible, much such proscription may have been added later by zealous scholars. It all goes to show how easy it is today to globalise hate, ignorance and religious fanaticism , no matter how trivial the cause. People everywhere can interpret a religious tract how they will, whether they be Christian, Muslim or Jonestown-style fundamentalists. If they have any charismatic power they can gather around them the vulnerable and the susceptible and turn them into a rabid mob.
The soft toy we call ‘teddy bear’ came into existence as a western companion to childhood innocence when Teddy Roosevelt refused to kill a helpless bear. From 1902 onwards, the toy was sold in shops. At the end of the 20th century it suddenly asserted itself as a symbol of masochism. Elvis wanted to be one, with a chain around his neck. Maybe the Sudanese Muslims should have left Gillian alone in her innocent ignorance and put the bear to trial. Pope would have been pleased.
Alexander Pope satirised the enmity between families caused by a suitor’s removal of a lock of a woman’s hair without permission, in Rape of the Lock, by comparing it to the rape of Helen of Troy and untold misbehaviour of the Gods. The ‘storm in a teacup’ that underpins such satire comes to mind over the teddy bear in the Sudan imbroglio. It would be hard to imagine a less offensive act to Islam than the naming of the said toy, Mohammed. From what I have read there is nothing in the verses of the Qur’an which prohibits such naming. It is inconceivable that Mohammed, himself, demanded that his name should not be taken in vain, such was his apparent humility! Just as with the Christian bible, much such proscription may have been added later by zealous scholars. It all goes to show how easy it is today to globalise hate, ignorance and religious fanaticism , no matter how trivial the cause. People everywhere can interpret a religious tract how they will, whether they be Christian, Muslim or Jonestown-style fundamentalists. If they have any charismatic power they can gather around them the vulnerable and the susceptible and turn them into a rabid mob.
The soft toy we call ‘teddy bear’ came into existence as a western companion to childhood innocence when Teddy Roosevelt refused to kill a helpless bear. From 1902 onwards, the toy was sold in shops. At the end of the 20th century it suddenly asserted itself as a symbol of masochism. Elvis wanted to be one, with a chain around his neck. Maybe the Sudanese Muslims should have left Gillian alone in her innocent ignorance and put the bear to trial. Pope would have been pleased.
Labels: Come on Sudan, grin and Bear it...
Naked animosity
Here is one of the drawings referred to in the last blog. If you are interested in seeing more of the artist's work, email me on my website and I will forward your email to her.
Labels: A few lines of naked truth